The proliferation of technology in today's society has created such a dependence that life without it would likely cease to exist as it is known today. For example, the convenience of communication devices such as wireless telephones, wireless pagers, and personal digital assistants (PDAs) have facilitated visual, audible, and tactile communications to be conducted virtually anytime and anywhere.
Portable computing devices, such as laptop computers, have also contributed to technology proliferation, since they allow productive activity in a hotel room, on an airplane, or simply in the comfort of one's own home. Individuals, however, are not the only members of society that are taking advantage of today's technology. Business units in virtually all fields of commerce have come to depend upon the advancement of technology to provide the edge that is required to keep them competitive.
A particular business entities' operations, for example, may require primarily static operational facilities, or conversely may require primarily dynamic operational facilities. Regardless of the nature of the business entities' operations, they will most likely depend upon advancements in technology to maintain their competitive edge. The operations of disaster relief organizations, for example, may be characterized as primarily dynamic, since the locale of a disaster relief organizations' operations may be the epicenter of a recent earthquake, or a flood zone left in the wake of a recent hurricane. Other primarily dynamic business operations may be exemplified by those of a local crime scene investigation (CSI) laboratory, whose primary activities include the collection and analysis of forensic evidence at a remote crime scene. Other primarily dynamic business operations may include those of news and movie industries, whereby collection of digital data is the primary objective during their respective operations.
Conversely, the characterization of a particular business entities' operation may be one that is primarily static. For example, telecommunication facilities are often provided all over the world to facilitate wireless and/or terrestrial based communications. Such installations often include switch equipment rooms that include a large number of electronic equipment racks that have been installed to provide both circuit switched, and packet switched, data exchange. Other forms of primarily static installations may include data migration centers, which offer large amounts of storage capability for a variety of applications that require data integrity.
It can be seen, therefore, that business operations conforming to either of the primarily static, or primarily dynamic, paradigm have occasion to provide electronic facilities that require at least some aspects of mobility. Primarily dynamic entities, for example, are often faced with the daunting task of mobilizing data computation and data storage facilities into an area that is not particularly conducive to such operations. A military unit, for example, may require temporary data storage and computational facilities at a site that is primarily characterized by extreme conditions, such as a desert or tropical environment. As such, the data computation/storage facilities required by the military unit are required to be mobile and operational in an environment that is particularly prone to at least one of high temperature, high humidity, and/or dust contamination. Furthermore, such an environment may not be particularly secure, nor topographically conducive, to the transportability of highly sensitive electronics.
Primarily static entities are also in need of mobile electronic facilities, since such facilities may be vulnerable to equipment failure, or simply may be in need of equipment upgrade. As such, a mobile electronic solution is needed to provide electronic equipment replacement, or augmentation, to fully support the replacement of failed electronics, or to augment the current capabilities of the electronic facility.
Traditional electronic enclosure solutions, however, simply fail in many respects to meet the demands of today's electronic enclosure requirements. Cooling techniques implemented within traditional electronic enclosures, for example, simply do not offer the efficiencies required to cool today's high-density electronic applications. Furthermore, environmental protection for today's electronic equipment enclosures is virtually non-existent, since such enclosures are typically implemented within buildings that offer protection from the environment. Efforts continue, therefore, to provide cooling solutions that exhibit higher cooling efficiencies, especially for outdoor electronic equipment enclosure applications.